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Three Amazing Movies Hidden In Pacific Rim 2

Pacific Rim 2 is a bad movie. There’s a hollow love triangle between Eastwood, Boyega, and a talking mop stand, which is only really addressed during a lengthy ice cream eating scene. There’s also a brief waft of tension as the teenage genius tries to integrate with a squad of adult Jaeger cadets, which feels pretty high-school. But otherwise the writing, dialogue, and story are all matchsticks holding up the giant robot action figures and Godzilla monsters, who revel more in property damage than actual fisticuffs.

In the opening narration Boyega, playing a character who lives off the scrapheap slums of dead Jaegers, tells us that the smaller Pacific nations have suffered complete financial collapse–unable to survive the crippling debt caused by excessive damage from prior battles. Then in the first fight scene we see Gypsy Danger *ahem* Gypsy Avenger, piloted by Boyega, using a tractor whip to pull skyscrapers over. Which proves to be about as dangerous to the enemy as a falling stack of popcorn buckets. It seems our protagonist forgot about infrastructure pretty quickly…But I digress.

No, the real gold to be mined from this movie happens in the background, creeping behind the action like a plot-tease. Quietly. Subtly. Sometimes in a single throw-away line of dialogue. And those are the little glimpses into the lore that we’ll be focusing on. Those tiny glimmers of actual story–those are the hidden movies we’ll be discussing, and how three little details would have made better movies than what became Pacific Rim 2.

Flowers for Algernon, Except A Brain

Wiki Commons / Google Images

In less time than it took to read the entry title, a strange detail is revealed about the cadets and how they train to operate the Jaegerbots. They have, at their disposal, a brain in a jar. And we’re given to understand that this brain has some level of consciousness, lives in the academy, and pops out of the ceiling anytime someone needs a co-pilot to mentally train with.

What. The. Fuckingfuck…

To really grasp this we’ll need to lay some groundwork about how the giant fighty robots operate. Two pilots are required to keep the Jaeger in motion. One acts as the robot’s left brain, and the other pilot operates the right brain. The Jaeger cannot function without both…except when this rule is broken for dramatic plot convenience, but we’re ignoring that for now. Two pilots, at all times, or the robot doesn’t move. Got it.

These pilots are also required to mind-link with each other. They call it “drifting” because calling it “mind-link” out loud by a human mouth would reveal how idiotic this process is. It’s much better to conjure images of this…

Google Images / Tokyo Drift

It’s also important to note that two pilots must be “drift compatible” which means they can sync their minds. They must be able to handle delving into each others’ memories and feelings. Mostly so the director can conveniently show them as children getting wrecked by Kaiju. This trauma frequently makes them incompatible as drift partners. Until they try really really hard in Act 2, I guess, at a time of crisis, since this incompatibility hasn’t permanently benched any pilots from either movie.

This is where the brain in a jar comes in. Sarah (as she is named by Boyega) is used, by the cadets, to practice their drift skills. In a sneeze-length scene we are told that she is compatible with all pilots, and this is a tool they use to hone their Jaeger skills. And then they tell us…nothing else. Her pod is whisked back up into the ceiling. Sarah is erased from memory. And the two protagonists go back to pretending there’s a plot somewhere in this movie.

I have so many questions. And the only source of information I could find came from a SciFi Stackexchange forum that provided a lot of “This seems logical to me…” answers from fans with no solid backing.

Who the hell is Sarah? Is she a clone? They have clone tissue in this movie, so is Sarah a blank brain in a vault they use like X-Box? Was Sarah a person? Is Sarah so emotionally passive she can drift with anyone? Did Sarah die in combat? Was she crushed in her Jaeger? Would a tragic death-by-robots make her less drift-compatible? When pilots link with her mind, do they see a yawning chasm of nothingness where her memories should be? What stimuli does her brain get when she’s not drifting with real people? How do they keep the brain from atrophying when it’s up in its dark ceiling hole? Why isn’t anyone offering ice-cream to Sarahbrain?!

I would watch a movie about a brain in a jar being used like Flight Simulator over Pacific Rim 2 any day. Especially if it involved a dejected flunky cadet who learns to love a stranger’s mind, which starts to awaken after frequent brushes with the memories of bright young pilots.

Batman, Except Amara’s Upbringing

Google Images / Youtube

Amara, played by Cailee Spaeny, is a genius. After watching her parents get Monty Python’d under the foot of a Kaiju at age 5(ish) she starts building her own Jaeger from scrap metal, like a tiny Astronaut Farmer. Let’s all take a moment to process that.

From her tragic Batman origin story, to when we first see her in the movie, she has passed from toddler to teenager. In that time gap, at a transitional age where most children can’t be trusted around the stove, Amara has accomplished several behind-the-scenes feats. She has;

Kept herself fed and clothed seemingly without support.

Thrived while living in a violent and treacherous slum.

Stolen from several rival gangs and scrappers.

Stayed off the radar of the local government. (As soon they discover her she gets recruited)

Educated herself beyond basic literacy, to to the point of writing complex computer code.

Built a giant robot durable enough to save the protagonists at the end of the movie.

And I ask: why aren’t we watching a movie about Amara? Because clearly she’s the hero we deserve.

When making her character the screenwriter simply scribbled “Batman+Ironman, but poverty” on the back page. If we eliminated Boyega or Eastwood from the movie, removed the ridiculous love triangle, and centered the movie around Amara being discovered in the slums with chunkier Big Hero 6, we’d have an epic movie.

Wait a moment. An Eastwood mentoring a scrappy young woman from the slums…

Google Images

“In the unlikely circumstance that you’re crippled for life we’ll get you some fancy robo-legs.”

— Hugh Jackman, Real Steel

American Psycho/Shape of Water, Except A Hallucination Fueled By Alien Thoughts

Google Images / Pacific Rim Wiki

If one brain in one jar is a fun plot device, why not use it three or four more times? As the movie reaches its middle we discover that mad scientist Dr. Newton Geiszler has a secret. After the conclusion of the last movie, Newton managed to steal the Kaiju brain from the government lab and secret it away in his downtown apartment. There he’s been mind-linking with it every night, letting the strange alien thoughts mesh with his own, creating a mental a dissonance. Also, he named the brain Alice. We know this because he wrote it on the jar. In blood. Probably Newton’s.

Later, in a twist of villainy that was inspired by ripped off from Neon Genesis Evangelion, the same alien brain is cloned into several drone Jaegers, creating the only cool moment in this entire goddamn movie. Kaiju-Jaeger hybrids with drone brains.

Google Images / Pacific Rim Uprising

Wait. Hold on. Why wasn’t the landing pad cleared? Sure, the drones turning hostile was unpredictable. But what military fills a landing strip with people before dozens of heavy machines are dropped in by helicopter?

Why wasn’t this heist and descent into madness the entire plot of the movie? Act 1: a daring government theft by a trusted scientist to whisk the alien mind to safety. Act 2: the slow realization by Newton that the brain he’s clearly in love with doesn’t love him back, and might be manipulating him, all while he struggles to appear normal at work during a tense investigation. Act 3: Newton accepts that he has become the villain, and sets his mad Jaeger-Kaiju drone strike into play.

Game. Set. Match.

Big Hero 6, Except All Three Previous Entries Combined

Google Images

We can have the best of all worlds. We really can. Imagine the following movie:

The heist of the kaiju brain by lovesick hero-turned-villain Dr. Newton.

A security footage tape of the pier where Amara’s family was killed, being reviewed by investigators.

A police interview with Amara, who has been evading custody for years.

We discover that Amara was finally caught because her giant robot saved her from a violent gang.

Eastwood intervenes, saving her from a prison sentence.

Realizing that revenge on the Kaiju (who are actually gone in this movie) is impossible, she agrees to join the military.

While investigating Amara, Eastwood finds her scrapper robot, and begrudgingly agrees to bring it along.

Newton gets his brain scrambled by the alien mind, and barely avoids a government investigation.

Amara, unable to drift, discovers Sarah the Brain. They strike up an understanding.

Heroic story arc? Check. Zero convoluted love triangles? Check. Empowerment? Check. A hero and villain who experience parallel trauma and come to terms with it in opposing ways? Double-check!

Or, you know, we can just accept this campy flavorless global-marketed horseshit and put some annoyingly repetitive beats to it. Seriously, listen to this song for more than three minutes and tell me you don’t want to pour acid in your ears…